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The North Carolina Awards 2003
The Award
The North Carolina Awards were instituted by the 1961 General Assembly, which acted on the idea of Dr. Robert Lee Humber of Greenville, State Senator from Pitt County. The purpose of the Awards, as set forth in the statutes, is to recognize "notable accomplishments by the North Carolina citizens in the fields of scholarship, research, the fine arts and public leadership." It is the highest honor the state can bestow.
The North Carolina Awards Committee
Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., Chairman
Nick Bragg
Hal Crowther
Shirley T. Frye
Jean W. McLaughlin
Message from the Governor
The North Carolina Award is the highest honor our state can bestow. Created in 1961 by the General Assembly, the award is given yearly to men and women who have made significant contributions in science, literature, fine arts, and public service. On behalf of all North Carolinians I congratulate the 2003 award recipients for their outstanding achievements. We in North Carolina are grateful to these outstanding citizens for their leadership, service, and talent.
Mike Easley
Program
40th North Carolina Awards
Awards Presentation and Dinner
Sheraton Imperial Hotel, Research Triangle Park, December 1, 2003
Pledge of Allegiance
Major General (ret.) Gerald A. Rudisill, Jr., North Carolina National Guard, Raleigh, North Carolina
Invocation
Monsignor Tim O' Connor
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Raleigh, North Carolina
Remarks and Awards Presentation
The Honorable Lisbeth C. Evans, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., Chairman, North Carolina Awards Committee
Governor Michael F. Easley, State of North Carolina
Acknowledgments
A.J. Fletcher Foundation
Pepsico
Video Documentation Program Department of Cultural Resources
2003 North Carolina Award Recipients
Fine Arts
Etta Baker
Few performers can rightfully lay claim to living legend status, but for guitarist Etta Baker, there is no doubt about it. She has been playing the traditional Piedmont blues for nearly 90 years, and to her fans she just keeps getting better. For the music she makes and the traditions she keeps alive, Etta Baker receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
Born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County in 1913, Baker was barely three when her father laid a guitar on the bed and placed her tiny hand on the strings. From that moment, she knew music would be her way of life.
Growing up one of eight musically gifted children, Baker remembers working hard, but at the end of the day, there was always music. She and her family played the old-time breakdowns and waltzes that were passed down through the generations, their repertoire expanding to include parlor music, gospel and traditional blues.
Influenced by the music of the Blue Ridge;; Mountains, Baker is one of the foremost practitioners of acoustic guitar finger-picking, an open-tuned style not far removed from banjo picking. Her music, a rich mixture of blues and country, has been described as "light and easy and enchanting," but because of its uniqueness, it is difficult to label. Baker herself calls it a "self style," because it's her own.
Baker has quietly enjoyed one of the most enduring careers among blues artists, working in relative obscurity and recording only on rare occasions while honing her craft. For decades, only relatives and close friends heard her play as she and her family confined their performances to corn shuckings and barn raisings.
Her music took second place to family after she married Lee Baker and moved to Morganton, where she gave birth to nine children - including two sets of twins. After her husband's death and with her children grown, Etta Baker returned to music. In her sixties, at an age when most people are contemplating retirement, Baker began pursuing music professionally, hitting the folk and blues festival circuit. In 1991, she recorded the album One Dime Blues, followed in 1999 by Railroad Bill.
Just as her playing style is unique, so too is the way she creates her songs. Baker says she often hears the chords in her dreams, then puts the sounds together when she awakens. While performing at the 1984 World's Fair, she arose at 2:45 a.m. to create the melody of the song that became known as "Knoxville Rag." Only a few of her songs are written down.
In addition to the World's Fair, Baker has performed at venues throughout the United States and Europe, including the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Park. She has been honored by the North Carolina Folklore Society; in 1989, she received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award; and in 1991, she received the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Baker continues to live in Morganton, keeping busy with her music, her garden and her nearby children - she has five generations of offspring scattered throughout the country. When not shingling her roof or teaching herself to play the piano, she performs on the festival circuit. She is, she says, the happiest person she knows.
Literature
Jaki Shelton Green
Jaki Shelton Green did not set out to be a writer, yet today she is considered one of the finest poets to call North Carolina home. Moreover, she is broadly recognized as an inveterate champion of the underdog. For the countless lives she touches by word and deed, Jaki Shelton Green receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Literature.
That Green would become a writer was ordained by her grandmother, who said she must tell her ancestors' stories. Green, however, wanted to be an oceanographer. But writing was her destiny. Even as a young child attending church with her grandmother, she wrote poems, hundreds of them penned across church fans and hymnals.
Then, as today, future stories were all around her, triggered by overheard conversations, a gesture, or a passing sight. Green leaves herself open for the muse to come in. When it does, she must write. She has been known to grab a paper bag in the grocery store and start writing while a thought is fresh.
Green records her thoughts in a dozen or more journals that she calls her bank account. She constantly makes deposits and withdrawals of her creative money, which in turn becomes the next poem, short story, or chapter in her novel.
Green was first published in a college literary journal at the age of 12. Since then, her works have appeared in textbooks, journals, anthologies and collections of poetry. Her widely acclaimed books include Dead on Arrival, Masks, Swiss Times, and Conjure Blues. Her works have been choreographed by the Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble, Miami City Ballet, and the Naropa Dance Institute of Colorado, among others. She produced a play, Blue Opal, and wrote one of the chapters in Pete and Shirley: The Great Tar Heel Novel. Her creative writing workshops and readings have been held throughout the nation and abroad.
She currently is working on a novel, Dandelion, told in the voice of a young slave girl whose spirit walks the halls of a governor's mansion, recounting stories of what happened in those halls through the years.
Born in 1953 in Efland, Green grew up in a large, loving family full of strong, articulate women. From those beginnings, she developed an unwavering commitment to family and community, particularly to those less fortunate. She fulfills that responsibility through the Child Care Services Association, where she currently works, and North State Legal Services where she worked for fourteen years. Just as she always has been a writer, she has also been a fierce activist for marginalized populations - abused women, the elderly, the incarcerated, and especially children.
She honed her passion for humanity with a degree in early childhood education, followed by a master's in community economic development. She has been a powerful influence on a lengthy list of boards and committees, including the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Paul Green Foundation, the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Writers' Network, and the North Carolina Arts Advocacy Commission. She also serves as co-chair of the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project.
Green is the mother of three adult children as well as stepmother to her husband's three grown children. She and her husband, Kenneth Fisher Jr., live in Mebane.
Public Service
Frank Borden Hanes
Frank Hanes once summed up his life this way: "Went to war on a destroyer, wrote some books, won some awards, caught a big trout." What he fails to mention would fill volumes. For his consistent, magnanimous support of the fine arts, his body of work as a writer, and his volunteer service to arts and educational organizations, Frank Borden Hanes receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Born in Winston-Salem in 1920, Hanes is a man of letters and a major philanthropist who carries on a tradition long held by descendants of John Wesley Hanes, founder of Hanes Hosiery Mills. For Hanes, now in his 84th year, his works are the best commentaries on his life.
A 1942 graduate ofthe University ofNorth Carolina, Hanes has an abiding love for his alma mater. There are few places one can go on the UNC campus that have not been touched in some way by Frank Hanes. A longtime benefactor, he has endowed numerous professorships, primarily in the fine arts. He was founding chairman of the Arts and Sciences Foundation, the private support arm of the College of Arts and Sciences, the university's oldest and largest academic unit. He established the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship in Creative Writing to bring promising young writers to the campus that first inspired Wolfe.
Hanes' philanthropy has added immeasurably to the literary holdings of the Academic Affairs Library. As trustee of the John W and Anna H. Hanes Foundation, Hanes helped make the library the first in the Southeast and one of only twenty in North America to reach the five millionth-volume milestone. The foundation has funded each of the library's millionth-volume acquisitions.
He served as a member of the Board of Visitors for fifteen years and as a trustee ofthe Morehead Foundation for thirty-six years. He continues as a member of the board of the University Press. The university honored Hanes in 1985 by naming the school's art center after him and his late wife, Barbara. In 2002, he was recipient ofthe North Caroliniana SocietyAward for extraordinary contributions to the state's historical and cultural heritage.
Outside the university, Hanes has been a benefactor of the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation and the Piedmont Opera Theater. He is a faithful donor to the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and a staunch supporter of a move to build a new WinstonSalem library and a museum dedicated to the town's history.
Much has been written about Hanes' philanthropy. Less, perhaps, is known about his writing. Following the war, Hanes turned his talents to writing, first as a reporter and then as an author of poetry and fiction. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for The Fleet Rabble; for that work he won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction in 1961. He won the inaugural Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry in 1953 for Abel Anders.
An avid fisherman, Hanes is never far from a good fishing hole. He walks three miles everyday at a pace that leaves companions breathless. Hanes remains devoted to his three grown children, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He and his wife, Jane, live in Winston-Salem.
Public Service
James Baxter Hunt Jr.
More, perhaps, has been written about Jim Hunt than anyone else in modern North Carolina history. He is the state's first governor to serve a second consecutive term, the first to have veto power, the first to emphasize pre-kindergarten education, and the only one to serve four terms. For his deep, consistent record of service over the longest period of time of any governor in state history, James Baxter Hunt Jr. is awarded the 2003 North Carolina Award for Public Service. <>Hunt was elected governor of North Carolina in 1976 at the age of 39. By the time he stepped down n, from office in 2001, he had served an extraordinary 16 years as the state's chief executive officer plus four as its lieutenant governor.
His page in North Carolina's history books is one of landmark achievements. He led North Carolina through some of the most dramatic growth and change in its history. He pioneered education reforms, including Smart Start, a preschool program that has been a model for the nation. During his watch, North Carolina became one of the fastest-growing states in the country.
Born in 1937, Hunt grew up in the Wilson County community of Rock Ridge. In high school, he was president of his junior and senior classes, yearbook editor, valedictorian and state president of the Junior Grange and Future Farmers of America. Characteristically, he played quarterback, at halftime, still in helmet and pads, he joined the marching band and played the trumpet.
He graduated in 1959 from North Carolina State University - where he was twice elected student body president - with a science degree, a wife, and his first child. After earning a master's degree in agricultural economics from N.C. State and a law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill, Hunt and his family moved to Nepal in 1964, where he worked as a Ford Foundation economic adviser. It was the experience gained in Nepal, he says, that prepared him to govern North Carolina. Back home, he won the 1972 election for lieutenant governor and set in motion his record 20-year career in public office.
Today, Hunt is a partner in the law firm of Womble Carlyle Sandridge and Rice. He serves as chairman of the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy. He also is chairman of the boards of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the Institute for Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State, and the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
His work has been recognized with many national awards, including the Education Commission of the States "James B. Conant Award," the Horace Mann League's "Friend of Education Award," the National State Boards of Education "Policy Leader of the Year Award," and the National Education Association "Friend of Education Award."
Hunt and his wife, Carolyn, live on their beef cattle farm in Rock Ridge. They have four children and nine grandchildren. Hunt manages to squeeze in fishing and hunting with his grandsons, reads "a ton," and travels, most recently to Hanoi and Australia. If he can find the time, there's still one mountain he wants to climb - literally - it is one of the high mountains he used to fly over when he lived in Nepal.
Fine Arts
Mary Ann Scherr
Mary Ann Scherr is an internationally recognized designer, educator and metalsmith who pioneered the use of exotic materials in jewelry and art. Although small in stature, she is a giant in the sphere of creative endeavor. For her devotion to her craft and her influence in the world of art, Mary Ann Scherr receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1921, Scherr knew by the age of five she wanted to be an artist. Every weekend, she used her three-penny allowance to buy paper from a local bakery for her drawings. By the time she entered the Cleveland Institute of Art, she wanted to be a sculptor, painter and designer. Metalsmithing was not yet part of her vision.
With the outbreak of World War II, she left school to work for Goodyear Aircraft Corporation. She eventually returned to Cleveland and reunited with Sam Scherr, a former high school classmate. When Sam joined General Motors in Detroit, he convinced her to take a job at Ford where she designed hood ornaments, instrument panels and interiors for all its automotive models. Soon, Sam and Mary Ann were married.
In the years that followed, the Scherrs returned to Akron and opened their own design shop. In addition to her design work, Mary Ann began experimenting with metals, accepted a teaching post at Kent State University, and became a first time mother. It was during those busy years that her career began to soar.
She was commissioned by the U.S. Steel Corporation to design a collection of stainless steel jewelry as part of a proposal to the government to switch from silver coins to stainless steel coins. She also developed a series of electronic human health alerts, encased in jewelry and known as "Body-Monitors," for which she earned patents and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In addition, she developed and copyrighted a unique process for etching metal.
In 1979, the family moved to New York City, where she became director of the Product Design Department at Parsons School of Design. Along the way, she continued producing her one-of-a-kind jewelry for such clients as the Duke of Windsor, Liz Claiborne, and Chelsea Clinton. Her works have traveled the globe, with exhibitions at the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian and the White House, among others. She has been featured on major television shows and in more than 120 publications. Her honors include Fellow of the American Craft Council and Lifetime Achievement from the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
In 1989, the Scherrs moved to Raleigh and Mary Ann began teaching at Duke University, North Carolina State University and Meredith College. Since the death of her husband in December 2002, she has continued teaching at Meredith and at the Penland School of Crafts, with which she has been affiliated for more than thirty years. She has three children, one grandchild and two step-grandchildren.
Scherr has been on the leading edge of metalsmithing for over fifty years, but she still seeks new breakthroughs in her work. Discovery, she says, is a way of life. Scherr shares her home in Raleigh with two Himalayan cats.
Science
William Thornton
William Thornton has packed more into 74 years than most do in several lifetimes. A physicist, physician, educator, pilot, writer, and the first astronaut from North . Carolina, Thornton has dedicated himself to the betterment of medicine - on earth and in space. For his enormous contributions to science and space, William E. Thornton receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Science.
Growing up in the small town of Faison, he taught himself electronics and other technologies, skills crucial to his later career. He received a B.S. degree in physics from the University of North Carolina with a commission from the Reserve Officer Training Corps. During his initial Air Force tour during the Korean War, he developed the first successful target and scoring system for air-to-air missiles, which was subsequently used worldwide. For this, he was awarded patents and the Legion of Merit.
Thornton returned to Chapel Hill to attend medical school. There, he also designed systems now routinely used in medicine, such as the first electronically monitored operating suites, the first automatic analyzer of electrocardiograms and monitoring devices. He pursued his great interest in flying by returning to the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. He developed instruments for space flight, including the first mass measuring devices, while on assignment to the Air Force's space program.
NASA also needed such items, and Thornton became one of their principal investigators for Skylab. Then, in 1967, he was selected as a NASA scientist astronaut. After USAF flight school, he conducted a number of original studies on Skylab and the Shuttle, documenting the effects of weightlessness on the human body, and countermeasures to them. This is now a fundamental component of space medicine. In 1983, on the space shuttle Challenger, he became the first and only physician to build his own laboratory and conduct his own experiments in space. On this flight, he studied space motion sickness and other effects of flight. His second flight, in 1985, was also on Challenger. He logged almost three thousand hours of pilot time in NASA jets and took medical retirement in 1994.
In 1995, Dr. Thornton became a clinical professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Texas Medical. Branch in Galveston. After four years of teaching, he developed a computer-based self-teaching system to provide hands-on training for seeing, hearing, and feeling patient signs. - It is now in extensive and expanding use.
In 2003, Thornton left UTMB to complete interrupted work and publication in space medicine and to pursue development of a new clinical system with UNC. He remains active in preservation efforts in Faison, including his family's home and woodlands, as well as development of a Will and Rosa Thornton library for youth.
Dr. Thornton and Jennifer, his wife of 45 years, live in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas. They have two grown sons and seven grandchildren. Thornton has numerous publications, more than 50 patents and many awards, but he considers his family his greatest achievement.

The North Carolina Awards 2003
The Award
The North Carolina Awards were instituted by the 1961 General Assembly, which acted on the idea of Dr. Robert Lee Humber of Greenville, State Senator from Pitt County. The purpose of the Awards, as set forth in the statutes, is to recognize "notable accomplishments by the North Carolina citizens in the fields of scholarship, research, the fine arts and public leadership." It is the highest honor the state can bestow.
The North Carolina Awards Committee
Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., Chairman
Nick Bragg
Hal Crowther
Shirley T. Frye
Jean W. McLaughlin
Message from the Governor
The North Carolina Award is the highest honor our state can bestow. Created in 1961 by the General Assembly, the award is given yearly to men and women who have made significant contributions in science, literature, fine arts, and public service. On behalf of all North Carolinians I congratulate the 2003 award recipients for their outstanding achievements. We in North Carolina are grateful to these outstanding citizens for their leadership, service, and talent.
Mike Easley
Program
40th North Carolina Awards
Awards Presentation and Dinner
Sheraton Imperial Hotel, Research Triangle Park, December 1, 2003
Pledge of Allegiance
Major General (ret.) Gerald A. Rudisill, Jr., North Carolina National Guard, Raleigh, North Carolina
Invocation
Monsignor Tim O' Connor
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Raleigh, North Carolina
Remarks and Awards Presentation
The Honorable Lisbeth C. Evans, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
Dr. Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., Chairman, North Carolina Awards Committee
Governor Michael F. Easley, State of North Carolina
Acknowledgments
A.J. Fletcher Foundation
Pepsico
Video Documentation Program Department of Cultural Resources
2003 North Carolina Award Recipients
Fine Arts
Etta Baker
Few performers can rightfully lay claim to living legend status, but for guitarist Etta Baker, there is no doubt about it. She has been playing the traditional Piedmont blues for nearly 90 years, and to her fans she just keeps getting better. For the music she makes and the traditions she keeps alive, Etta Baker receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
Born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County in 1913, Baker was barely three when her father laid a guitar on the bed and placed her tiny hand on the strings. From that moment, she knew music would be her way of life.
Growing up one of eight musically gifted children, Baker remembers working hard, but at the end of the day, there was always music. She and her family played the old-time breakdowns and waltzes that were passed down through the generations, their repertoire expanding to include parlor music, gospel and traditional blues.
Influenced by the music of the Blue Ridge;; Mountains, Baker is one of the foremost practitioners of acoustic guitar finger-picking, an open-tuned style not far removed from banjo picking. Her music, a rich mixture of blues and country, has been described as "light and easy and enchanting," but because of its uniqueness, it is difficult to label. Baker herself calls it a "self style," because it's her own.
Baker has quietly enjoyed one of the most enduring careers among blues artists, working in relative obscurity and recording only on rare occasions while honing her craft. For decades, only relatives and close friends heard her play as she and her family confined their performances to corn shuckings and barn raisings.
Her music took second place to family after she married Lee Baker and moved to Morganton, where she gave birth to nine children - including two sets of twins. After her husband's death and with her children grown, Etta Baker returned to music. In her sixties, at an age when most people are contemplating retirement, Baker began pursuing music professionally, hitting the folk and blues festival circuit. In 1991, she recorded the album One Dime Blues, followed in 1999 by Railroad Bill.
Just as her playing style is unique, so too is the way she creates her songs. Baker says she often hears the chords in her dreams, then puts the sounds together when she awakens. While performing at the 1984 World's Fair, she arose at 2:45 a.m. to create the melody of the song that became known as "Knoxville Rag." Only a few of her songs are written down.
In addition to the World's Fair, Baker has performed at venues throughout the United States and Europe, including the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Park. She has been honored by the North Carolina Folklore Society; in 1989, she received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award; and in 1991, she received the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Baker continues to live in Morganton, keeping busy with her music, her garden and her nearby children - she has five generations of offspring scattered throughout the country. When not shingling her roof or teaching herself to play the piano, she performs on the festival circuit. She is, she says, the happiest person she knows.
Literature
Jaki Shelton Green
Jaki Shelton Green did not set out to be a writer, yet today she is considered one of the finest poets to call North Carolina home. Moreover, she is broadly recognized as an inveterate champion of the underdog. For the countless lives she touches by word and deed, Jaki Shelton Green receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Literature.
That Green would become a writer was ordained by her grandmother, who said she must tell her ancestors' stories. Green, however, wanted to be an oceanographer. But writing was her destiny. Even as a young child attending church with her grandmother, she wrote poems, hundreds of them penned across church fans and hymnals.
Then, as today, future stories were all around her, triggered by overheard conversations, a gesture, or a passing sight. Green leaves herself open for the muse to come in. When it does, she must write. She has been known to grab a paper bag in the grocery store and start writing while a thought is fresh.
Green records her thoughts in a dozen or more journals that she calls her bank account. She constantly makes deposits and withdrawals of her creative money, which in turn becomes the next poem, short story, or chapter in her novel.
Green was first published in a college literary journal at the age of 12. Since then, her works have appeared in textbooks, journals, anthologies and collections of poetry. Her widely acclaimed books include Dead on Arrival, Masks, Swiss Times, and Conjure Blues. Her works have been choreographed by the Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble, Miami City Ballet, and the Naropa Dance Institute of Colorado, among others. She produced a play, Blue Opal, and wrote one of the chapters in Pete and Shirley: The Great Tar Heel Novel. Her creative writing workshops and readings have been held throughout the nation and abroad.
She currently is working on a novel, Dandelion, told in the voice of a young slave girl whose spirit walks the halls of a governor's mansion, recounting stories of what happened in those halls through the years.
Born in 1953 in Efland, Green grew up in a large, loving family full of strong, articulate women. From those beginnings, she developed an unwavering commitment to family and community, particularly to those less fortunate. She fulfills that responsibility through the Child Care Services Association, where she currently works, and North State Legal Services where she worked for fourteen years. Just as she always has been a writer, she has also been a fierce activist for marginalized populations - abused women, the elderly, the incarcerated, and especially children.
She honed her passion for humanity with a degree in early childhood education, followed by a master's in community economic development. She has been a powerful influence on a lengthy list of boards and committees, including the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Paul Green Foundation, the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Writers' Network, and the North Carolina Arts Advocacy Commission. She also serves as co-chair of the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project.
Green is the mother of three adult children as well as stepmother to her husband's three grown children. She and her husband, Kenneth Fisher Jr., live in Mebane.
Public Service
Frank Borden Hanes
Frank Hanes once summed up his life this way: "Went to war on a destroyer, wrote some books, won some awards, caught a big trout." What he fails to mention would fill volumes. For his consistent, magnanimous support of the fine arts, his body of work as a writer, and his volunteer service to arts and educational organizations, Frank Borden Hanes receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Born in Winston-Salem in 1920, Hanes is a man of letters and a major philanthropist who carries on a tradition long held by descendants of John Wesley Hanes, founder of Hanes Hosiery Mills. For Hanes, now in his 84th year, his works are the best commentaries on his life.
A 1942 graduate ofthe University ofNorth Carolina, Hanes has an abiding love for his alma mater. There are few places one can go on the UNC campus that have not been touched in some way by Frank Hanes. A longtime benefactor, he has endowed numerous professorships, primarily in the fine arts. He was founding chairman of the Arts and Sciences Foundation, the private support arm of the College of Arts and Sciences, the university's oldest and largest academic unit. He established the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship in Creative Writing to bring promising young writers to the campus that first inspired Wolfe.
Hanes' philanthropy has added immeasurably to the literary holdings of the Academic Affairs Library. As trustee of the John W and Anna H. Hanes Foundation, Hanes helped make the library the first in the Southeast and one of only twenty in North America to reach the five millionth-volume milestone. The foundation has funded each of the library's millionth-volume acquisitions.
He served as a member of the Board of Visitors for fifteen years and as a trustee ofthe Morehead Foundation for thirty-six years. He continues as a member of the board of the University Press. The university honored Hanes in 1985 by naming the school's art center after him and his late wife, Barbara. In 2002, he was recipient ofthe North Caroliniana SocietyAward for extraordinary contributions to the state's historical and cultural heritage.
Outside the university, Hanes has been a benefactor of the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation and the Piedmont Opera Theater. He is a faithful donor to the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and a staunch supporter of a move to build a new WinstonSalem library and a museum dedicated to the town's history.
Much has been written about Hanes' philanthropy. Less, perhaps, is known about his writing. Following the war, Hanes turned his talents to writing, first as a reporter and then as an author of poetry and fiction. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for The Fleet Rabble; for that work he won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction in 1961. He won the inaugural Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry in 1953 for Abel Anders.
An avid fisherman, Hanes is never far from a good fishing hole. He walks three miles everyday at a pace that leaves companions breathless. Hanes remains devoted to his three grown children, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He and his wife, Jane, live in Winston-Salem.
Public Service
James Baxter Hunt Jr.
More, perhaps, has been written about Jim Hunt than anyone else in modern North Carolina history. He is the state's first governor to serve a second consecutive term, the first to have veto power, the first to emphasize pre-kindergarten education, and the only one to serve four terms. For his deep, consistent record of service over the longest period of time of any governor in state history, James Baxter Hunt Jr. is awarded the 2003 North Carolina Award for Public Service. <>Hunt was elected governor of North Carolina in 1976 at the age of 39. By the time he stepped down n, from office in 2001, he had served an extraordinary 16 years as the state's chief executive officer plus four as its lieutenant governor.
His page in North Carolina's history books is one of landmark achievements. He led North Carolina through some of the most dramatic growth and change in its history. He pioneered education reforms, including Smart Start, a preschool program that has been a model for the nation. During his watch, North Carolina became one of the fastest-growing states in the country.
Born in 1937, Hunt grew up in the Wilson County community of Rock Ridge. In high school, he was president of his junior and senior classes, yearbook editor, valedictorian and state president of the Junior Grange and Future Farmers of America. Characteristically, he played quarterback, at halftime, still in helmet and pads, he joined the marching band and played the trumpet.
He graduated in 1959 from North Carolina State University - where he was twice elected student body president - with a science degree, a wife, and his first child. After earning a master's degree in agricultural economics from N.C. State and a law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill, Hunt and his family moved to Nepal in 1964, where he worked as a Ford Foundation economic adviser. It was the experience gained in Nepal, he says, that prepared him to govern North Carolina. Back home, he won the 1972 election for lieutenant governor and set in motion his record 20-year career in public office.
Today, Hunt is a partner in the law firm of Womble Carlyle Sandridge and Rice. He serves as chairman of the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy. He also is chairman of the boards of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the Institute for Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State, and the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
His work has been recognized with many national awards, including the Education Commission of the States "James B. Conant Award," the Horace Mann League's "Friend of Education Award," the National State Boards of Education "Policy Leader of the Year Award," and the National Education Association "Friend of Education Award."
Hunt and his wife, Carolyn, live on their beef cattle farm in Rock Ridge. They have four children and nine grandchildren. Hunt manages to squeeze in fishing and hunting with his grandsons, reads "a ton," and travels, most recently to Hanoi and Australia. If he can find the time, there's still one mountain he wants to climb - literally - it is one of the high mountains he used to fly over when he lived in Nepal.
Fine Arts
Mary Ann Scherr
Mary Ann Scherr is an internationally recognized designer, educator and metalsmith who pioneered the use of exotic materials in jewelry and art. Although small in stature, she is a giant in the sphere of creative endeavor. For her devotion to her craft and her influence in the world of art, Mary Ann Scherr receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1921, Scherr knew by the age of five she wanted to be an artist. Every weekend, she used her three-penny allowance to buy paper from a local bakery for her drawings. By the time she entered the Cleveland Institute of Art, she wanted to be a sculptor, painter and designer. Metalsmithing was not yet part of her vision.
With the outbreak of World War II, she left school to work for Goodyear Aircraft Corporation. She eventually returned to Cleveland and reunited with Sam Scherr, a former high school classmate. When Sam joined General Motors in Detroit, he convinced her to take a job at Ford where she designed hood ornaments, instrument panels and interiors for all its automotive models. Soon, Sam and Mary Ann were married.
In the years that followed, the Scherrs returned to Akron and opened their own design shop. In addition to her design work, Mary Ann began experimenting with metals, accepted a teaching post at Kent State University, and became a first time mother. It was during those busy years that her career began to soar.
She was commissioned by the U.S. Steel Corporation to design a collection of stainless steel jewelry as part of a proposal to the government to switch from silver coins to stainless steel coins. She also developed a series of electronic human health alerts, encased in jewelry and known as "Body-Monitors," for which she earned patents and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In addition, she developed and copyrighted a unique process for etching metal.
In 1979, the family moved to New York City, where she became director of the Product Design Department at Parsons School of Design. Along the way, she continued producing her one-of-a-kind jewelry for such clients as the Duke of Windsor, Liz Claiborne, and Chelsea Clinton. Her works have traveled the globe, with exhibitions at the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian and the White House, among others. She has been featured on major television shows and in more than 120 publications. Her honors include Fellow of the American Craft Council and Lifetime Achievement from the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
In 1989, the Scherrs moved to Raleigh and Mary Ann began teaching at Duke University, North Carolina State University and Meredith College. Since the death of her husband in December 2002, she has continued teaching at Meredith and at the Penland School of Crafts, with which she has been affiliated for more than thirty years. She has three children, one grandchild and two step-grandchildren.
Scherr has been on the leading edge of metalsmithing for over fifty years, but she still seeks new breakthroughs in her work. Discovery, she says, is a way of life. Scherr shares her home in Raleigh with two Himalayan cats.
Science
William Thornton
William Thornton has packed more into 74 years than most do in several lifetimes. A physicist, physician, educator, pilot, writer, and the first astronaut from North . Carolina, Thornton has dedicated himself to the betterment of medicine - on earth and in space. For his enormous contributions to science and space, William E. Thornton receives the 2003 North Carolina Award for Science.
Growing up in the small town of Faison, he taught himself electronics and other technologies, skills crucial to his later career. He received a B.S. degree in physics from the University of North Carolina with a commission from the Reserve Officer Training Corps. During his initial Air Force tour during the Korean War, he developed the first successful target and scoring system for air-to-air missiles, which was subsequently used worldwide. For this, he was awarded patents and the Legion of Merit.
Thornton returned to Chapel Hill to attend medical school. There, he also designed systems now routinely used in medicine, such as the first electronically monitored operating suites, the first automatic analyzer of electrocardiograms and monitoring devices. He pursued his great interest in flying by returning to the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. He developed instruments for space flight, including the first mass measuring devices, while on assignment to the Air Force's space program.
NASA also needed such items, and Thornton became one of their principal investigators for Skylab. Then, in 1967, he was selected as a NASA scientist astronaut. After USAF flight school, he conducted a number of original studies on Skylab and the Shuttle, documenting the effects of weightlessness on the human body, and countermeasures to them. This is now a fundamental component of space medicine. In 1983, on the space shuttle Challenger, he became the first and only physician to build his own laboratory and conduct his own experiments in space. On this flight, he studied space motion sickness and other effects of flight. His second flight, in 1985, was also on Challenger. He logged almost three thousand hours of pilot time in NASA jets and took medical retirement in 1994.
In 1995, Dr. Thornton became a clinical professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Texas Medical. Branch in Galveston. After four years of teaching, he developed a computer-based self-teaching system to provide hands-on training for seeing, hearing, and feeling patient signs. - It is now in extensive and expanding use.
In 2003, Thornton left UTMB to complete interrupted work and publication in space medicine and to pursue development of a new clinical system with UNC. He remains active in preservation efforts in Faison, including his family's home and woodlands, as well as development of a Will and Rosa Thornton library for youth.
Dr. Thornton and Jennifer, his wife of 45 years, live in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas. They have two grown sons and seven grandchildren. Thornton has numerous publications, more than 50 patents and many awards, but he considers his family his greatest achievement.